


to the (unsteady) beat of my (weakened) heart

by humaankameleonn (nainai96)



Series: Fic Orphanage and Graveyard [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Bulimia, Cutting, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Sad Harry, Self-Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 20:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nainai96/pseuds/humaankameleonn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Styles has an eating disorder.  </p>
<p>This is how it goes (from the start).</p>
            </blockquote>





	to the (unsteady) beat of my (weakened) heart

**Author's Note:**

> Major trigger warning for eating disorders and a minor trigger for cutting.
> 
> Please heed these warnings - I'm posting this hoping that no one will use this fic, or any others, to purposely trigger themselves as I sometimes do. If you need help or someone to talk to, my tumblr username is humaankameleonn and my ask box is open.
> 
> I'm not sure whether this is finished but enjoy and comment below if you've any criticism.

The first time that Harry Styles ever showed any sign of disordered eating habits was an average afternoon when he was nine years old.

He had arrived home to the afternoon snack that his mother had lovingly left on the kitchen counter, carefully covered with thin plastic sheeting that promised cleanliness and purity.  He separated the apple slices from the cheese, and the cheese from the crackers.  He then took the vegetable peeler and (taking his time) scraped the finest layers off of the slices and arranging them in a careful fan shape.  He crushed the crackers into a miniature mountain and melted the cheese into a soup in the microwave, fingers twitching as the timer neared the zero mark.

It took him two hours to finish eating the meal (after he was finished arranging, re-arranging and re-re-arranging the way that the foods appeared on his plate, starting over again every time that any two foreign particles touched in any way deemed unfathomable by the boy).  His hands moved slowly, as though stuck in tar, occasionally adding salt to his snack, teaspoons at a time.  When he finally finished his meal, he watched the first ten minutes of his favourite cartoon before he stood and calmly walked to the bathroom where he promptly vomited the contents of his stomach into the pristine porcelain bowl.

When he had been purged of the nourishment, Harry sat back on his heels, ears ringing, eyes moist and reddened, feeling accomplished and guilty, but, above all, _empty._  It was a feeling that brought him immense pleasure, internal though it may have been.  So he stood up, flushed the toiler, took a shower and fell asleep in the tub, waiting to be found by his older sister.

When his eyes flickered open, the sun was shining though the skylight of his room, indicating that he had been asleep for more that twelve hours.  He sat up almost immediately, unwilling to waste anymore of the day to laziness, his head bursting with ideas and merriment as, for the first time in his life, he felt light and clean.

 

+

 

It took only a week for that particular habit to cement itself into Harry’s everyday routine and another sixty-four for him to realize that he could be just as empty, just as _clean_ ,if he eliminated the need to purge.  And the simplest way to do that was to cut out the step before – the bingeing.  He would go for days with only water crackers, fat-free yogurt, and sweet, milky tea (the only true allowance of sugar that he would consume) preventing him from collapsing from malnutrition.  He always broke his fasting rituals for holidays and special events, opting to revisit his old habit of purging if he consumed more than his self-regulated allowance of 250 calories per day.  But, for the most part, Harry filled his stomach with negative calories and spent his days in bed (sometimes his own, sometimes not), leaving only for promises of cleanliness and a soft place to rest his head.

 

+

 

For years Harry stuck to this routine, enjoying the safety and emptiness that this habit promised, save for random intervals that lasted up to a fortnight, where he would eat like a normal person all day.  It was during these days that he didn’t sleep as often; his body given the reprieve that it craved almost as desperately as his mind craved _“clean”_ and _“empty”_. 

It was always during the change of seasons that Harry allowed himself to consume the excess calories; that was when his friends and his mother were constantly on his back, insisting that he go and _try this, Harry, I made it with these_ gorgeous _fruit and veg and etcetera, etcetera that I got at the farmers market_ and _eat up mate! My mum’s made tons, it’s not like we’re going to run out anytime soon._

+

Harry spent the week that he went to audition for X-Factor stuck between a rock and a hard place.  He was one hundred percent unsure of whether he should eat and not pass out on live telly but end up looking a fat mess or not eating and passing out but looking thin.  The decision was one of the most difficult that Harry had ever had to make but he managed to choose to eat and hope to God that the tech crew would edit his extra flab out of the footage.

+

 

When he made it through to boot camp, his appetite only decreased exponentially to point where the world was only a fuzzy blur and clarity was only felt on the rare days when he would nibble around a salad (void of any dressing, of course) to appease his roommate’s worry.  He couldn’t afford to fall back into the marvellous pit of bingeing and purging like he would have loved to.  It might have gotten his friends off his back and maybe get his family to stop worrying so damn much if maybe, just maybe, the cameras had managed to get a shot of him with his mouth full, but along with the bingeing came the purging, and the purging brought with it the terrible rasping sound that fucked with his voice for hours on end – sometimes even days if he’d had a lot to bring back up.  So he slept a lot, nibbled his way through bland rice cakes and chugged down hundreds of mugs brimming with frothy tea, on occasion even choking down a protein bar when a particularly long day of dancing was order. 

Once the band was formed, he began to eat in a somewhat normal fashion, still languid in movement, but at least he was eating.  He needed to keep up his strength if he wanted One Direction to make it to the top and they wouldn’t be able to win if he out.  That was all that Harry needed to remind himself of whenever he was at the kitchen table and his arms felt like they were made of lead.  And if the boys ever became suspicious past their original concerns, they didn’t show it, obviously buying the story that Harry had fed them, the one where he spent a lot of his childhood sick and in bed, the one in which his stomach was still a tad tetchy.

(When they don’t win, Harry falls to pieces, his heart slows and his eyes dull.  This was _his_ fault, he was sure of it.  Maybe if he was lighter, maybe if he was more buoyant.  Maybe if he wasn’t so goddamn sloppy, so goddamn stupid, talentless, maybe if he wasn’t anything.  Maybe if he was clean.  Maybe if he was _empty.)_

He blacks out for the next six hours or so, pattering through the motions without really thinking, becoming nothing more than a carbon copy of the mask that he wore so flawlessly, the one that fooled the world, his friends, his family.

 

+

 

When he wakes up, all that Harry can think is _‘we didn’t make it but_ w _e’re still getting signed’_.

 

+

 

At breakfast the next morning, he pours a bowl of cereal but lets it sit, stagnant, as he falls into a conversation with Niall, thinking of their future as a family, friends and a band.  He lets his eyes flicker to the bowl twice before gathering the physical strength necessary to stand midsentence and walk away from a befuddled Niall, muttering something about a shower over his shoulder as an explanation.  But that’s okay because at this point, everyone is as used to Harry’s randomness and his mood swings as they could ever be.

 

+

 

It doesn’t even register with him that he’s restarted _that_ regimen until they’re in Italy and all he can concentrate on is Liam’s furrowed brow when he lies his way out of ‘ _at least a kiddie scoop’_ of gelato while the rest of the boys chow down on double scoops of the frozen fat.  He shivers in the heat and looks away, returning his attention to his water bottle, draining it so it looks as good and empty as he feels.

 

+

 

Harry, for all intents and purposes, is and has always been a frightfully careful person, which is probably why everyone’s suspicions of his eating habits take so damn long to really manifest and emerge from the depths of their psyche’s as an actual hypothesis.   Niall is the one who recognizes the smoke signals first (though he’ll admit later that he thought he was way too late).  In fact when he finally does put everything together, all he can think is _my fucking god, how could we have totally ignored this?  We’re supposed to be a family, goddamnit._ He snaps out of it quickly though, and, after noting that his internal monologue took up three minutes of precious Saving Harry time, glad that no one took any notice of his statuesque silence, he pulls out his zip drive, the one that he keeps on a golden chain around his neck, the one that everyone knows about but still manages to remain his own (a fucking miracle and he knows it), and jams it into his computer.  He begins pushing everything that comes to mind out, out of his thoughts and into his fingers to be translated onto the screen.  He encrypts the file twice, just to be on the safe side and saves the file to the USB under the name ‘ _Souvenirs to buy mum’_ , and makes sure to send it to himself through an old email account that hasn’t been touched since 2002, for back up. 

It only dawns on Niall that he may be going a _tad_ overboard when he’s waiting for his laptop to finish wiping the hard drive of anything related to eating disorders.  _What if Harry really is just as ill as he had said?  What if you’re twisting facts to suit theories instead of twisting theories to suit facts?_   He slams his laptop shut at that final thought, vowing to get all the facts before he even considers jumping to another conclusion.  He tugs the jump drive out of the port and silently clips it back onto the chain before it can cause him anymore stress and, eager to get away from the addictive thoughts, he rejoins the group for pre-dinner conversations.

 

+

 

It turns out that Niall’s been worried sick over absolutely nothing.  He contacts Gemma to ask (rather conspicuously he thinks) what she thinks about taking Harry to a fancy restaurant for his upcoming birthday, maybe getting him a cuisine that he hasn’t dined upon in years.  She chuckled quite a bit at that one.

_Harry’s never been one for food really,_ she explains.  “Always ate too slowly, was really picky about what went into his mouth ever since I can remember.  Even after puberty, he would sit at the table for hours on end, just picking at a salad.”  She giggles at the memory, adding with an afterthought that maybe it would be a better idea to take him to a film.

After he hangs up, Niall feels like a thousand bricks were lifted off his shoulders; the relief is practically palpable.  So Harry wasn’t sick like Annie was.  So he wasn’t going to lose his brother like he had his sister.  He sighs heavily and forgets his worries like a good lad.

 

+

 

Harry isn’t just careful, he’s also very aware of everything: of his mind, body, and soul, of others (what they’re thinking, why they do/think/act what/like they do).  So when Niall starts staring at him far too often (and not at all like he did when he first discovered the fan fiction) and holding the gaze for far too long, there is little doubt in his mind that the blond boy may possibly have stumbled upon his secret.  He manages to stay calm though, and he begins to force himself to swallow every bite of every meal that Niall attends, which is, annoyingly enough, becoming every meal, inhaling the food so quickly that he can’t even taste it (but that’s good: he likes it that way).  He sits and pushes though _that_ feeling, the one that makes him itchy, full and dirty.  He would kill for the chance to purge, but they’re recording right now and he can’t risk the rasping that accompanies the puking as a calling card of sorts.  But he needs to feel clean _somehow_ even though Niall, knowing him, will stay on this for at least a few weeks before gaining the courage to call either Harry’s mum or sister.  So Harry spends his nights shivering in the tub naked, with angry red rivers streaming down the soft flesh of his inner thighs, tainting the snowy ceramic tub with the sanguine liquid.

 

+

 

Harry’s always known that he isn’t straight, that he was something more.  Now, he’s not completely sure if he’s bi- or pansexual, but he does know that he likes boys too.  So when one of the boys from back home propositions him while he’s home visiting his mum, he says what any teenage boy would: _of course_.  He’s made out with boys before and has given quite a few handjobs, but he’s never known the flavour of precum, hot on his tongue, straight from the source, never tongued the slit of a throbbing dick, eyes watering, ears ringing, drowning in the insatiable moans and pants of the boy above him, the one with thick fingers laced through his hair.  He’s never felt that feeling of power, of accomplishment from knowing that he had the power to make someone plead and cry from the simple movements of his lips and tongue.

He thinks he’d enjoy it though, so when he arrives on Christian’s doorstep, hand poised to ring the bell, it makes sense that his nerves are outweighed by excitement.

 

+

 

When all is over and done with, he walks down the street wondering exactly how many calories are in jizz and how many kilometres he’ll have to run to rid his body of them. 

He thinks to Skype Louis when he gets back home but thinks better of it and instead calls Zayn.

(He picks up.)

He starts off the conversation with an unmistakable _I just engaged in non-penetrative gay sex and I really enjoyed it._   He hears a deep breath being taken on the other side and patiently awaits Zayn’s verbal response. 

“That’s great, mate.  I didn’t know that you were even interested in anyone.” He pauses in allowance of Harry’s distinct laugh and assurance that he _not_ emotionally invested in a one off hook up with whom he’s never going to even hold a conversation again.  “Why’d you call me then?” Zayn presses, obviously befuddled by his best friend.

“Because, I’ve decided that I’d be down to have sex with you too.  Well, any of you really; you’re all quite fit and I _know_ that you and Niall are hung as fuck.”  His voice doesn’t crack or tremble or stutter and Zayn is completely caught off guard.  He sputters out a wheezy _what?!_ and Harry makes a point to remind his friend that he’s completely sober and (for the most part) sane. 

_Just think about it, yeah?_

He would wink suggestively as a goodbye, but they’re on the phone, so instead he borrows from Grease and signs off with a saucy and deliberate _See you later, stud_ , words like sex dripping off his tongue, hanging up before he could catch the low moan the reverberates through Zayn’s body and tingles the tip of his hardened cock.  And if it only takes a simple visualization of his Hazza kneeling between someone’s legs, face drenched in spunk, to make him cum hard, then that’s between him and his imagination.

 

+

 

Harry’s heart beats hard and fast (but still far too slow).  He drops onto his bed, head reeling from his conversation with Zayn, the way that he had him speechless for the first time ever, had him under control with just a few well-chosen words and a deep husky tone of voice.  He’s too high on sex adrenaline and hunger endorphins to even consider the consequences that he might face from propositioning his best friend and inviting the rest of the boys to join in.  Instead, he closes his eyes and falls asleep to the unsteady beat of his weakened heart.

 

+

**Author's Note:**

> I know this wasn't really up to standard but it's been hanging round my computer for far too long. Please check out my other fic and a kudos would really mean a lot :)


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